Monday, June 21, 2010

Color Touches Will Drive Your Retail Sales

Growing your retail business is a crucial ingredient in increasing bottom line profitability and building brand awareness. Accomplishing this takes time, creativity, ingenuity and thinking BIG! Last holiday season I was driving through a local strip plaza where I live on my way to the store when I was blown away by the colorful and festive holiday decorations from a salon in the plaza, The Vanity Room in Yorba Linda, CA. It was so well done it stayed in my mind and I decided to go in and give them a try a month later. I am now a regular client.

Over the last five months I have been in four times and my wife is also a regular client. Each time I went into the salon there was something different visually to stimulate the senses and increase retail awareness. As a salon business coach I loved seeing a salon practice what we preach so I decided to ask the owner, Shelly Elliott to sit down for an interview.

Successful retail branding comes from the following components:

- great retail products- education for the staff- good use of retail space- adding color to entice consumer senses and awareness- strategic incentives and promotions- thinking like a retailer- creating diversity (accessories, purses, jewelry, etc.)- team involvement & follow through

What jumps right out to you when you visit Shelly’s space is that she thinks like a retailer, creating diversity and she incorporates color wisely. She stated, “I added decorations one year for the holidays and our customers noticed. They really enjoyed it, asked about what we were going to do next and grew to expect it. Our customers reacted to the colors powerfully so I had to keep stepping up each time and it has become fun. We like to add a little color that signifies the season or event and use it throughout the salon, from decorative eggs for Easter to multi-colored flowers for Mother’s Day.”

When asked how she sees her retail space Shelly shared, “I think of the business as a retail store, like Nordstrom’s for example, not just a salon. We added a boutique and we now sell jewelry, handbags, hats, shirts, etc. Not only that, we add the little touches like gift bags with bows and colorful wrapping paper when customers purchase something.”

As you can see by the pictures a little color and thought can go a long way and can freshen up your space which leads to sales growth and drives profitability.

The next time you walk into your salon or spa, stop and look around and imagine how you can infuse a little more color into your retail space to take it to the next level and give your customers even more to talk about!

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Milady, a Division of Cengage Learning

Milady

Milady is the leading provider of beauty and wellness education and has been an industry staple for the past 80 years. Known not only as a provider of pre-licensure resources, Milady offers training and consulting nationwide in various forms for salon and spa professionals, changing the lives of tens of thousands each year.